The Coming Storm

by Mark Alpert

  But Keller wasn’t amused. His frown turned menacing. “I’m familiar with this argument. You promised me the same thing in our last conversation, using the very same words. And I told you no, remember? I told you I didn’t want any other officials brought into the project. And then I specifically warned you not to breathe a word about Palindrome to anyone. Remember?”

  The AG didn’t reply. His face reddened, and he stepped backward. He seemed to finally realize why the K-Man had summoned him to the White House.

  Keller propped his sharp elbows on his desk and leaned forward. “But you ignored my warning. You discussed Palindrome with the secretary of Homeland Security.”

  “No, that’s not true!”

  “We recorded it. Frankly, I’m stunned at your stupidity. Didn’t it occur to you that we might have listening devices in the secretary’s office?”

  The attorney general took another step backward. His eyes darted to the left and right, as if he was looking for the nearest exit. He bit his lip. “I’m sorry, Vance, but I had to do something. You’re taking too many risks without—”

  “You’re the problem. You’re the threat to national security.” Keller stretched his long arm across the desk and pointed at the AG. “You jeopardized one of our most important operations by revealing the classified details to an unauthorized official.”

  “Unauthorized? That’s ridiculous! He’s a member of the president’s cabinet!”

  Keller shook his head. “Not anymore. And neither are you. You can continue your conversation with him if you want, because I’m sending both of you to the same place.” He turned away from the attorney general and looked straight at Grant. “Colonel, will you do me a favor? This traitor has violated the Espionage Act. Please arrest him.”

  Grant stood up and grinned. “With pleasure, sir.” He reached for the inside pocket of his jacket, where he kept the essential tools of his job—his badge, his extra clip of nine-millimeter bullets, and a pair of handcuffs. Moving with practiced ease, he stepped behind the attorney general, grabbed his arms, and snapped the cuffs on.

  To Grant’s disappointment, the gnome didn’t resist. He just stood there, shivering in disbelief. He’d assumed he was smarter than his bosses, and now he was shocked to discover that he wasn’t. And Grant didn’t feel sorry for him, not one bit. The guy was smug and sneaky and sanctimonious, but worst of all, he was disloyal. In Grant’s opinion, that was an unpardonable crime.

  Keller was even less sympathetic. He pointed at the door. “Well, it’s time to say goodbye. I’ll tell the newspapers that you resigned for medical reasons, and that you’re being treated at the Beaumont Army Medical Center in Texas.”

  The AG’s knees buckled, but Grant held him by his elbows and kept him from hitting the floor. He sagged in Grant’s hands like a sack of laundry. “Please … Vance…” He was sobbing. “I … I can’t…”

  “Don’t worry. You’re not actually going to Texas. That’s just our cover story.” The K-Man twisted his lips again. “In reality, you’re going to Colorado. Specifically, the maximum-security federal prison in Fremont County. I hear it’s lovely this time of year.”

  The attorney general let out a whimper. Disgusted, Grant pulled him away from the desk. With one hand he held the AG upright, and with the other he opened the office door. Then he handed the spineless twerp to the pair of Secret Service agents in the hallway. “Here you go. You know what to do with him, right?”

  The agents nodded. They weren’t surprised. Keller must’ve given them a heads-up.

  Grant watched them drag the attorney general down the corridor. Then he turned back to Keller, closing the door behind him. “Thank you, sir.” He returned to the armchair in front of the desk. “You were right. That was very instructive.”

  Keller picked up his pen and went back to studying his documents. But Grant could tell that their meeting wasn’t over yet. The K-Man gave him a sidelong glance. “Now that he’s out of the way, you can take charge of the entire Federal Service Unit. All the other regional commanders will report to you. For the time being, though, I want you to focus on Palindrome. We need to move to Phase Three as quickly as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.” Grant nodded vigorously, showing nothing but confidence. “Everything’s in place. We’ve completed all the field tests, and we’ll be ready for the deployment very soon. We can start Phase Three in forty-eight hours, maybe less.”

  “Is there anything else we should be worried about? Any potential complications that we haven’t already discussed?”

  Grant took a moment to think it over. Unlike the AG, he had no worries about Palindrome’s safety. The leaders of the research teams had assured him that Phase Three posed no threat to public health. His biggest concern was that someone would try to sabotage the project during this crucial period. One of the lab directors, a researcher named Tung, had gone missing yesterday, just vanished without a trace, and that had made Grant nervous about the project’s security. So he’d ordered the roundup of all the scientists on the teams, right down to the lowliest graduate students. Most of the researchers didn’t know the full scope of Palindrome or its ultimate goal, but they were clever people, and one of them might figure it out. Better to lock them all in a secure detention facility for the next few days, so they couldn’t disrupt the all-important Phase Three rollout.

  He had another concern about the project, but it was less pressing and more nebulous, more like a nagging unease. It had to do with one of the field tests that the Special Forces had conducted in Afghanistan. The army commander there was an old buddy of Grant’s, and he’d sworn up and down that all the participants in the Palindrome test had been accounted for. But his reports weren’t entirely complete or convincing. Grant worried now about the loose ends.

  In the end, though, he decided against sharing these concerns with Keller. Whatever happened, Grant could handle it. He was going to make Palindrome a success, no matter what. He had to admit, he’d become obsessed with the project. He’d spent so much time and energy on it, almost three years of planning and coordinating. It was the most important assignment he’d ever taken on, and it had already given him more satisfaction than anything else in his life—more than the twenty years he’d wasted in the U.S. Army, more than his ungrateful kids and their bitch of a mother. Keller had promised him a spectacular reward for his efforts, and now the payoff was in sight. Palindrome would be his redemption, his crowning glory. It would vindicate everything.

  “No complications, sir.” Grant made a chopping motion with his right hand, as if beheading an enemy. “We’re gonna win this thing. We’re gonna show them all.”

  The K-Man kept his eyes on his papers, but he seemed satisfied. He crossed out another sentence. “Very good. Once you get back to New York, you can—”

  A howl interrupted him, a loud, guttural moan that shook the walls. Keller’s head popped up, and Grant jumped to his feet. At first he thought it was the attorney general, but the unnerving noise wasn’t coming from the corridor. It came from behind the door that led to the Oval Office.

  Grant leapt toward the door, but Keller held up his hand. “No! I’ll take care of it.”

  “But he’s—”

  “Don’t worry, he’s not hurt. This happens every night.” Keller stood up and reached the door in two long strides. “It’s just another challenge we’re dealing with. Please let yourself out of the West Wing and return to your duties, Colonel.”

  Then the K-Man entered the Oval Office and shut the door behind him, leaving Grant on the other side.

  A moment later, the president let out another unearthly howl.

  FIVE

  Lieutenant Frazier stared at his men in disgust. Six of them slouched on the bench seats inside the Stryker as it raced back to the South Brooklyn District’s fence. Their uniforms were muddy and dripping. Filthy brown water trickled from their body armor and puddled on the vehicle’s steel floor. They’d just spent two hours searching the streets and apartment buildi
ngs of Brighton Beach during the worst storm in the city’s history, but they had nothing to show for their efforts. They hadn’t found the Khan girl. They were a bunch of useless dipshits.

  Frazier focused his loathing on the idiot to his left, Sergeant Lynch, the leader of the team that let the girl get away. The sergeant was big and burly, a natural-born brawler, but the expression on his wet face was terrified. Frazier was reaming him out.

  “So how long was it again?” He got in Lynch’s face, staring him down. “A minute?”

  “I swear, Lieutenant, it was less! I took my eyes off the bitch for thirty seconds, tops!” He cringed, leaning back in his seat, pressing his shoulders against the inside of the Stryker’s armored hull. “She was right there, on the sidewalk, and then she was gone!”

  “And she just disappeared? Carried away by the storm, maybe?”

  “I looked up and down the street. No sign of her. I figured she was hiding behind one of the parked cars, because that’s what everyone else was doing. We were under heavy fire.”

  “Really? From a few civilians with handguns?”

  The look on Lynch’s face was childishly pathetic. A bead of muddy water dripped from his chin. “Sir, there were at least a dozen shooters in the apartment buildings! We blasted some of them, but we couldn’t get them all. They kept moving from window to window, taking shots at us. I’m telling you, sir, it was fucking serious!”

  Frazier shook his head. These dipshits weren’t real soldiers. They’d never served in Syria or Somalia or Afghanistan. Most were recruited from SWAT teams in stateside police departments, so they had no idea what to do in a firefight. For a moment, Frazier wished he was back in Kandahar with the Rangers, with a team of real soldiers who knew what the fuck they were doing. Like Deadeye Spinelli or Mad Dog Jones, or Frazier’s old commander, Captain Powell, the Butcher of Balochistan. Those guys kicked some serious jihadi ass, and that was in the ragheads’ home territory. This numb-nuts Lynch wouldn’t have lasted a week there.

  “Let’s speed things up, Sergeant. How long were you pinned down?”

  “Uh, five minutes?”

  It was probably ten minutes, maybe more. That would’ve given the Khan bitch plenty of time to run off. Even so, it was such a clean getaway that Frazier suspected that someone had helped her. Maybe a neighbor or a friend. Or some thug from one of the South Brooklyn gangs, maybe the Bloods or the Latin Kings. Or maybe—and this was the worst-case scenario—it was another person connected to Palindrome. Maybe Colonel Grant had a serious security breach on his hands. That would explain why he’d sounded so pissed when he’d contacted Frazier.

  “Just one more question. You notice anyone trying to help the girl? Any bystanders take a particular interest in her?”

  The sergeant nodded. “Yeah, this old lady in one of the apartments started yelling out her window at us. But we took care of her, Lieutenant. We fucked her up good.”

  Frazier clenched his hands. He wanted to crush this moron’s empty skull. In fact, he wanted to kill all six of the soldiers in the Stryker, the whole sorry team. And he could do it too. He was strong and fast enough. He could decapitate all of them without breaking a sweat.

  But he had his orders to carry out, and murdering his own men wouldn’t be helpful. Instead, Frazier reached for his wireless tablet, which was linked to the FSU’s surveillance network. At the moment, the network had a lot of holes in it; the agency’s drones were grounded tonight because of the weather, and the storm had cut power to most of the security cameras on the streets. When Frazier turned on the tablet, though, the screen displayed a list of battery-operated surveillance cameras that were still transmitting their video feeds to the network. There were more than a hundred of them in the South Brooklyn District, and about half were infrared cameras that could show the glowing heat signatures of human bodies moving through the darkness.

  He selected the four infrared cameras closest to the Khan girl’s apartment building and displayed all their video feeds on the tablet’s screen, arranged in quadrants. Then he stared at the feeds, looking for glowing figures in the dark, flooded streets. The task was made easier by the fact that the storm was still raging and very few people were outside. All the places worth looting had already been ransacked. The only figure Frazier spotted was a fat homeless guy lying on the hood of a car, just above the floodwaters on Brighton Beach Avenue. He was either drunk or dying.

  After a few seconds, Frazier chose four more infrared feeds, transmitted by cameras a bit farther away from the girl’s building, and inspected them just as carefully. Then he scrutinized another quartet of videos, then another. He did it quickly and efficiently, his eyes roving over the images and his mind focusing on any out-of-place details. He’d always been good at this kind of mental work, but his brain had sharpened after the last round of injections, and now he eyeballed each feed in less than a second. Although the government had computer programs that could do the same thing—recognizing faces, detecting security threats—Frazier knew he was doing it better than any software package could. He was a fucking surveillance machine.

  As he scanned the videos, he noticed the trail of damage from the storm surge. It had smashed Coney Island’s shoreline, pulverizing the boardwalk and knocking down a long stretch of the elevated train tracks. A camera mounted on a nearby high-rise building showed the cold, dark seawater surrounding the Stillwell Avenue station. Floating in the water were several human bodies, still warm but rapidly cooling.

  Frazier grimaced. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve ordered a rescue-and-recovery operation. His men would’ve charged into the flooded neighborhoods and tried to save the storm’s survivors. He’d led plenty of rescue operations in Afghanistan, ordering the Special Forces to combat zones to extract wounded soldiers, and it still seemed like the natural thing to do. He kept staring at the screen, at the corpses bobbing in the water, and his discomfort worsened. He felt like he was neglecting his most important duty.

  But this situation was different, he reminded himself. The floating bodies on the screen weren’t his fellow soldiers. They were the corpses of the people he was fighting, and most of them weren’t even American. The storm was doing the FSU’s job, getting rid of the illegals who didn’t belong in this country and the murderers and terrorists who wanted to destroy it. So there was nothing to worry about. One of the corpses might even be the Khan girl, Frazier thought. He tried to adjust the video feed to get a better look at the bodies, but most were floating facedown and tangled in garbage.

  After several seconds he gave up and moved on to the next set of video feeds, which were from four cameras farther north, in the Gravesend neighborhood. There was nothing interesting on three of the feeds, but the fourth caught Frazier’s eye. The camera was on a rooftop on 25th Avenue, a hundred yards from the elevated tracks where the D train used to run. Although the video was grainy, Frazier spotted two people on the tracks, a large male and a small female, their bodies shining brightly in the infrared images. They were walking north, away from Coney Island and toward the District’s fence. In ten minutes they would reach Bay Parkway, the same checkpoint Frazier had been supervising a couple of hours ago.

  His pulse raced. He adjusted the magnification of the surveillance video and zoomed in on the female. She had short hair and wore a long, loose nightshirt. That lined up with Colonel Grant’s description of the Khan girl. Frazier couldn’t identify her male companion—the video quality was too poor to show the guy’s face or any distinguishing characteristics—but he thought of Palindrome again. It took some balls to walk on the elevated tracks, especially on a night like this. These people weren’t ordinary bums or scumbags. They were the fucking assholes he was looking for.

  Frazier lunged toward the front of the Stryker. He brushed past the corporal sitting at the gunner’s station and grabbed the shoulder of the private who was driving the vehicle. With his other hand, Frazier pointed at the map on the driver’s navigation screen.

  “Head for t
he Bay Parkway checkpoint! Fast as you can!”

  * * *

  Frazier jumped out of the Stryker as soon as they got there. He needed to find Sergeant Barr and Corporal Hendricks, the officers he’d left in charge of the checkpoint, but he stopped in his tracks when he saw the mob on the other side of the fence. It had more than tripled in size over the past two hours.

  At least a thousand ragged people crowded a block-long stretch of Bay Parkway, jammed up against the chain-link fence that ran down the middle of the street. They stood in foot-deep floodwaters, all of them eyeing the locked gate, their wet faces gleaming under the checkpoint’s searchlights. The ones at the front of the crowd clutched the fence and rattled the mesh of steel links. More than a dozen had climbed halfway up the fence, and a few were trying to clamber over the coils of razor wire at the top. Meanwhile, the assholes at the back of the crowd tossed pieces of broken pavement over the gate. One of the chunks hit Sergeant Barr in the helmet, making him stagger and drop to his knees. Corporal Hendricks just stood there, his mouth wide open.

  Frazier ran toward them, cradling his M4 carbine. He halted between Barr and Hendricks, making sure that everyone in the crowd could see him. Then he pointed his assault rifle at the night sky and fired over the heads of the fence climbers.

  Most of them instantly let go of the fence and dropped to the ground. A few stubborn fuckers clung to the fence’s steel links, but Frazier kept firing until they let go too. One idiot got tangled up in the razor wire and hung upside down, screaming. The coil tightened around his legs and the razor blades dug into his thighs. Blood soaked his pants and dripped from the fabric.

  The crowd backed up, retreating several feet from the fence. But they didn’t scatter. Frazier reloaded his rifle and fired another thirty bullets over their heads, but nobody bolted. Instead, more ragheads converged on the checkpoint. Thousands of them were trying to flee the district, sloshing north on the side streets toward Bay Parkway.